On Amistà: Negotiating Friendship in Dante's Italy

by Elizabeth Coggeshall

Overview

Although we often think of friendship today as an indisputable value of human social life, for thinkers and writers across late medieval Christian society friendship raised a number of social and ethical dilemmas that needed to be carefully negotiated. On Amistà analyses these dilemmas and looks at how Dante’s strategic articulations of friendship evolved across the phases of his literary career as he manoeuvred between different social groups and settings.

Elizabeth Coggeshall reveals that friendship was not an unequivocal moral good for the writers of late medieval Italy. Instead, it was an ambiguous term to be deployed strategically, describing a wide range of social relationships such as allies, collaborators, servants, patrons, rivals, and enemies. Drawing on the use of the language of friendship in the letters, correspondence poems, dedications, narratives, and treatises composed by Dante and his interlocutors, Coggeshall examines the way they skillfully negotiated around the dilemmas that friendship raised in the spheres of medieval Italian literary society. The book addresses instances of inclusivity and exclusivity, collaboration and self-interest, hierarchy and equality, and alterity and identity. Employing literary, historical, and sociological analysis, On Amistà presents a genealogy for the innovative and tactical use of the terms of friendship among the works of late medieval Italian authors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487548179
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	03/17/2023
Series:	Toronto Italian Studies
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Elizabeth Coggeshall is an assistant professor of Italian at Florida State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Dilemmas of Friendship in Dante’s Italy

Friendship’s Many Faces
A Sociological Approach: The Fields and Practices of Friendship

1. Exclusivity: The Piazza

Friendship as Civic Medicine
Creating Networks
The Ship of Friendship
Friendship’s Secret Chambers
Epilogue

2. Self-Interest: The University

Language and Amicabilitas
The Ciceronian Turn
Amicita as Disinterested Collaboration
Amicitia as Self-Interested Sponsorship
Abandoning Amicitia

3. Hierarchy: The Court

Friendship in the Patronage Economy
Negotiating Inequality
The Game of Honour
Managing Reciprocity
The Gratuitous Gift

4. Difference: The Afterlife

Inferno: Against the Other
Purgatorio: Beside the Other
Paradiso: Beyond the Other
The Eclipse of Friendship

Epilogue: Friendship’s Afterlife in Early Humanism

Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Heather Webb

"In this thoughtful account of what friendship does in Dante's text and in Dante's time, Elizabeth Coggeshall offers a nuanced, contextualized picture of friendship as constituting a range of fraught relationships, foregrounding the sociopolitical and literary tensions of Trecento Italy. A timely and immensely valuable contribution to our understanding of Dante and his social networks."

Mary A. Watt

"In these days, when friendship is increasingly navigated in virtual settings and intertwined with social media, Coggeshall's fascinating study of the role and value of friendship in the Middle Ages is extraordinarily timely.　As she explores 'friendly' competition between poets, for example, Coggeshall invites the reader to consider not only what medieval intellectuals meant by 'being a friend' but also how their understanding of friendship continues to resonate in the modern era."

Guy P. Raffa

"Whereas previous studies of friendship in Dante's oeuvre rely almost exclusively on literary analysis filtered through a theological lens, Coggeshall breaks new ground by looking at friendship in its many guises from a sociological angle. This major contribution to the flourishing field of Dante studies will also be of significant interest to scholars, teachers, and students in medieval and early modern studies."

Kristina M. Olson

"Departing from well-known philosophical, scriptural, and theological contexts, On Amistà refreshingly analyses how Dante molded the lexicon of friendship into the language of survival and self-promotion in his lyric poetry and Latin works, and the consequences for this new vision of friendship in the Commedia's imagined bonds of attachment. I highly recommend this book for readers of Dante and those interested in the continuities and ruptures between the medieval and early modern periods."　

Editorial Reviews

"In this thoughtful account of what friendship does in Dante's text and in Dante's time, Elizabeth Coggeshall offers a nuanced, contextualized picture of friendship as constituting a range of fraught relationships, foregrounding the sociopolitical and literary tensions of Trecento Italy. A timely and immensely valuable contribution to our understanding of Dante and his social networks."

—Heather Webb, Professor of Medieval Italian Literature and Culture, University of Cambridge

"Whereas previous studies of friendship in Dante’s oeuvre rely almost exclusively on literary analysis filtered through a theological lens, Coggeshall breaks new ground by looking at friendship in its many guises from a sociological angle. This major contribution to the flourishing field of Dante studies will also be of significant interest to scholars, teachers, and students in medieval and early modern studies."

—Guy P. Raffa, Professor Emeritus of Italian Studies, University of Texas at Austin

"In these days, when friendship is increasingly navigated in virtual settings and intertwined with social media, Coggeshall’s fascinating study of the role and value of friendship in the Middle Ages is extraordinarily timely.　As she explores ‘friendly’ competition between poets, for example, Coggeshall invites the reader to consider not only what medieval intellectuals meant by ‘being a friend’ but also how their understanding of friendship continues to resonate in the modern era."

—Mary A. Watt, Professor of Italian Studies, University of Florida

"Departing from well-known philosophical, scriptural, and theological contexts, On Amistà refreshingly analyses how Dante molded the lexicon of friendship into the language of survival and self-promotion in his lyric poetry and Latin works, and the consequences for this new vision of friendship in the Commedia's imagined bonds of attachment. I highly recommend this book for readers of Dante and those interested in the continuities and ruptures between the medieval and early modern periods."　

—Kristina M. Olson, Associate Professor of Italian, George Mason University

From the Publisher